There can't be a Harvest Moon in the RimWorld.

Secondly, he couldn't watch his current favorable situation collapse instantly. He'd even overcome a crisis like the one faced by a lord; was he really going to let this fool ruin it all? Wouldn't all the business partners he'd painstakingly found also be wasted?

"...To be fair, I believe he has already paid the price for his dishonesty, and I hope you can be lenient..."

I grabbed the fat man and walked around the slave shacks, only to find myself surrounded by bizarre characters just as bizarre as those at the beginning. The most serious one, who was probably suffering from food poisoning, was stuffing dirt into his mouth.

"M-Sir...I really only have...I'm not lying to you..."

The fat guard's wound on his buttocks was still bleeding, and it seemed quite likely he had caught tetanus. But he didn't dare to stop the bleeding; instead, he loudly begged me for mercy, shouting desperately.

Are there really no normal people here? Or is it a research center for abnormal humans?

I walked around the residential area for a while, then suddenly strode up to a low wall. There was a sealed wooden door on the wall, firmly blocked from the inside, making it look like a dead end. But while the whole area was covered in excrement and filth, the corner of this wall was unusually clean. Perhaps it was because people frequently went in and out, cleaning and tidying up?

My years of experience finding hidden doors in RPG games are no joke!

It doesn't matter if the door can't be opened. I swung my halberd and smashed it against the low mud wall. Amidst the flying dust, the building collapsed with a roar, revealing a gap that could be used for passage.

"The slaves you've hidden should all be in this area, right?"

I said menacingly to the fat warden, grabbed him by the neck, and threw him into the gap.

Sure enough, there were dozens of slaves of all sizes standing in this place, still dressed in rags and looking miserable. Moreover, these people were even more emaciated and thin, and some even had varying degrees of limb defects. They huddled in the courtyard, trembling with fear of the sudden movement.

But the people before them were different from the lifeless, expressionless figures outside. A gaunt leader quickly stepped forward from the crowd, prostrated himself on the ground, and said in a humble and sincere tone, "Your esteemed lord, please forgive Lord Wiska's actions... We are merely a group of lowly slaves, and we would never cause any harm to the territory..."

Judging from his tone, he thinks I'm the lord of the Loader's Domain?

This misunderstanding seems quite plausible. I, alone with my entourage (the old man and the bald man), was beating up the person in charge here (the fat man) as if he were nobody's business, wearing exquisite armor that looked like a silver mirror (steel plate armor), and speaking in an accusatory tone...

I know that the best course of action at this moment is to remain silent. As long as I maintain my authority, I can let their delusions fester and eventually reveal their weaknesses.

This method is actually very effective. You can team up with a few friends, whisper to someone, and then remain mysteriously silent for ten minutes. The person being pranked will soon develop paranoia, feeling that you know their inner secrets, and eventually suffer a mental breakdown.

I stood in the middle of the field, ignoring the slaves' requests—nonsense, I was playing the role of a lord, how could I speak to lowly slaves?

So I lifted the fat warden into the air, and no matter how fat he was or how much his feet kicked, I simply held the stone war mask to his panicked face, letting him roar, beg for mercy, curse, and cry as he pleased.

Sure enough, after ten minutes of this silent standoff accompanied by the slave's soft whimpers, the fat man's will finally broke down, and with a mournful face, he had no strength left to struggle.

"I...I'll tell you everything..."

He was terrified of my "mind-reading" ability from the beginning, but with the idea that the more he confessed, the more he wanted to struggle one last time. However, when he saw me watching his performance like I was watching a clown, all his inner fears finally erupted, directly breaking down his defenses.

As the fat warden described, I learned that the people in front of me were the original inhabitants of this land, who had been captured by the loader's leader and enslaved.

As they entered, the fat man immediately recognized that these men were different from the original slaves of pirates and bandits. He had deliberately deceived them, explaining that the lord outside had always wanted to kill them all, and only by hiding them among the slaves could they remain undiscovered. If they disobeyed, he would hand them over to the lord!

As a result, such lies grew stronger in the minds of these people, especially after the temporary head of the slave ward whipped two of their companions to death. They became even more convinced that what the fat man said was true—that the whole world was preparing to harm them, and only the fat man could protect them!

Thus, these people became model slaves for more than a decade. While other slaves slacked off in the fields, they worked tirelessly to plant crops and raise animals, fearing that they would be abandoned if they failed to demonstrate their usefulness.

This fat man was also a talent. He relied on this group of slaves as the main force of production to complete most of the production tasks. He let the other slaves drive out the good ones with bad money, and kept a bunch of oddballs to prevent others from discovering that the position of slave supervisor was a cushy job.

And that's exactly what happened. Back then, the temporary slave overseer was unaware of these elite slaves. He forced those oddballs to work every day, which inadvertently provoked their rebellious tendencies, resulting in almost no harvest that year and their direct killing.

In this situation, no one would covet the position.

But the fat man wasn't satisfied; he wanted a life of plenty. Of the hundred-plus people in the slacking-off team, only twenty were actually working. The rest consumed the output by eating and drinking as an average. The fat man conveniently cut rations and falsified accounts to create an atmosphere of deficit, deceiving everyone inside and outside the team.

"Is this the legendary case of a treacherous villain appearing as a loyal one? He's clearly deceived so many people, yet everyone still thinks he's a good subordinate, a good guard, and a kind-hearted person?" I muttered to myself, never imagining that reality would be far more bizarre than the stories.

And then a joke suddenly popped into my head.

Someone went to church to confess: Father, I have sinned...

Priest: Speak, my child, what is it?

Someone: During World War II, I hid a Jew who was being hunted by the authorities.

Priest: That's a good thing. Why do you feel guilty?

Someone: I hid him in my basement, and I made him pay me 1500 francs a day in rent.

Priest: That's understandable. Are you going to repent for this?

Someone: But I haven't told him yet that World War II is over!

Chapter 344 A Loose Plate

"Please, please let me go... I really didn't mean it... I just wanted to have a couple of nice days in this godforsaken place..."

The fat warden knelt before me, tears streaming down his face, and like a self-destructive maniac, he laid bare all his little schemes and tricks over the years, leaving everyone around him dumbfounded.

The old man in the floral shirt stood there dumbfounded, as if he had heard the biggest joke in the world. He opened his mouth to inhale but couldn't utter a word. After a long while, he whispered, "I must be dreaming... How could someone like this have fooled everyone for so many years? No, I must be dreaming..."

After saying that, he pinched his arm hard, but his expression didn't change. Then he gritted his teeth and pinched it again, finding no feeling, he quickly exhaled and said with relief, "Hahaha... it really was a dream, a false alarm... a false alarm..."

But then, a startling scream erupted from the sidelines: "Ah!!! That hurts!!!"

The old blacksmith accidentally pinched his own hand... well, let's not determine whether it was intentional or unintentional, and it landed on the arm of the bald man who was also staring blankly. And his hands, which had spent a lifetime forging iron, had not weakened with age; they were like iron clamps, tightly twisting into his apprentice's arm.

During the first attack, the bald man was still in the nerve transmission stage. He gasped for breath, his mouth agape, before he could even utter a sound. But the second, more powerful attack came immediately, instantly breaking through his pain limit. For a moment, his nerves even seemed to melt from the pain, rendering him unable to react.

But amidst the numb, dull pain, he felt the skin on his arm being pulled and poked like a plastic bag. The adhesion between his skin and muscles was instantly torn apart, and the skin on his hand turned into a rag. He collapsed to the ground and rolled around, leaving only the dumbfounded old man in the floral shirt.

As expected, the master and apprentice are like father and son. Their actions were so smooth and fluid. I wonder how many times they have practiced.

But the farce here also startled the stunned slaves.

The slaves who had been hiding in the corner of the courtyard, fearfully watching the slave leader negotiate with the intruders, had been transformed into rows of stone statues. Their rough skin had lost all its luster, as if they were all poor souls who had been turned into pillars of salt because they had witnessed God's miracle.

They didn't whisper or make a fuss. All the slaves fell silent in unison, staring at the fat warden on the ground with lifeless eyes.

"Fatty, aren't you afraid the other guards will expose you?" I asked.

The fat man, sprawled on the ground, sobbing and snot streaming down his face, said, “I’ve driven away all the other guards. They’re only responsible for guarding the tower… Nobody wants to deal with these stinky slaves except me. Even the occasional curious person is scared away by the slaves I put at the door and has no interest in going in.”

Oh, no wonder they keep such a large group of oddballs around the guard tower. Against these strong, muscular lunatics, even a lone guard might not be a match. It's like walking bare-handed into a research center for abnormal humans—who would be in the mood to analyze the mental illnesses of the patients around them?

I glanced at the people in front of me and found that their character attributes were vastly different from those of the others. Although they didn't have any particularly outstanding special attributes, at least they weren't cursed with any fatal debuffs. In addition, their backgrounds were mostly those of town dwellers, with identities such as farmers, apprentices, blacksmiths, and carpenters, which was completely different from the group of bandits and pirates who were prisoners outside.

Unfortunately, after checking these people, I had already checked all the slaves in the Loader's Territory, and not a single one of them was a resident of Ten Pine Manor. Judging from the fat man's mentally broken state, it was unlikely that he could hide anything from me anymore, let alone hide the slaves above ground where I couldn't find them—they might be hidden underground, but I didn't know how many intact bones were left.

The slaves here are all older models, over five years old, with no warranty or after-sales service. Their overall condition is not good; they seem to have neither vitality nor value. Even the slaves that the fat warden hides away like treasures are just a group of slightly more hardworking slaves, not of much use to me.

Farming? I can support an army by myself.

Forging iron? Have you ever seen anyone forge iron by hand?

Keeping animals? Sorry, the animals in my territory are not only masters of emojis, but they can also walk themselves.

Looking at the pathetic patchwork of yellowish-green crops outside, I had no interest in even identifying what they were. Growing food in this water-scarce, high-temperature place is almost a case of working ten times harder for half the results; the output is extremely disproportionate to the input. No matter how hard these people work, they can't make much of a difference, especially now…

I spoke to the slave leader who was lying on the ground: "Don't you want to kill this man in front of you? He has deceived you for more than ten years and treated you like cattle and horses."

The slave leader on the ground did not raise his head, but sobbed miserably with a grief greater than death.

These people's original beliefs seem to have been shattered—perhaps their trust in the fat man, their persistence in surviving, or perhaps the reasons they used to deceive themselves into staying alive.

They originally believed that they could protect their lives through hard work. This idea, though humble, was the last vestige of value in their unfortunate lives. Their actions were like the sacrificial rituals of primitive tribes—ignorant yet devout, as if they wanted to throw themselves into it to escape the cruel reality before them.

But today, their beliefs have been shattered. When they find themselves just like the slaves outside, merely one of the ordinary ants, they feel not relief, but a deep-seated despair and anger at being used.

But putting ourselves in their shoes, what could they do? Even though their faith had been proven false, it had sustained them for over a decade. No amount of impotent rage could withstand the overwhelming despair and the helplessness of not knowing where to go.

"Stand up and answer me!"

I suddenly spoke, startling everyone around me. The fat man, who had been lying slumped on the ground, jumped up in a flash, only to find that I wasn't facing him, but rather the slave leader on the ground.

The slave leader heard the voice but didn't hear any further conversation. He then raised his head in disbelief, looked at me with hazy eyes, and his voice trembled with disappointment.

"Your Majesty, I am but a lowly slave, unworthy to speak with you... Please allow us to live as the most ordinary slaves in your territory from now on..."

It's true that if you kneel for too long, you'll forget how to stand!

I was dissatisfied, but I showed no change in my emotions. "Of course you can be a slave... but you seem to have misunderstood something. I never said that I was the lord here, did I?"

Chapter 345 Two Ways to Die

"What?!!!"

The slave leader on the ground and the slaves behind him finally began to stir. They vaguely sensed that something was wrong, but they couldn't quite put their finger on it. Perhaps years of being tools had greatly weakened their intuition, and their ability to think was almost on par with that of animals.

Therefore, I must reiterate that slavery is the most backward system in terms of productivity.

If he were a resident of sound mind, he would immediately sense the incongruity within. There are only two possibilities for someone who is not a lord, yet engages in beating the warden and disrupting the territory's order.

The first possibility is that the person in front of him is an imperial inspector from eight prefectures who is traveling incognito with an imperial sword, or a king of beggars who is ordered to beg for a golden bowl. Otherwise, it would be impossible for him to come over like a dragon crossing the river without any scruples.

The second possibility is that the person in front of you is an out-and-out rebel, armed with swords and spears, who has stormed into your territory and is ready to overthrow the world.

Unfortunately, the feudal ruling class lacked the courage for self-revolution, let alone the ability to wield any divine weapons capable of beheading tyrannical rulers and treacherous officials to oppose them. Therefore, I, the rebel, now stand boldly before them, like a steel beast.

But what lay before me was an even bigger problem: how to liberate the slaves.

True emancipation of slaves is not simply about breaking their chains. For example, the Emancipation Proclamation in the United States was merely a formality.

Lincoln himself stated explicitly: "I have never advocated for racial, social, or political equality between whites and blacks in any way; nor have I ever advocated for blacks to have the right to vote... Our ultimate goal is to preserve the Union, not to abolish slavery."

Lincoln's call for the war to "free the slaves" did not mean he sympathized with slaves; it was merely to destroy the plantation economy in the South and prevent Britain from taking the opportunity to send troops to help the South, since Britain was the initiator of the abolitionist movement.

Because the liberation of slaves was not genuine, the North decisively abandoned its former comrades after the war and formed an alliance with the South. Black people were liberated, but fell into the trap of large landowners and capitalists. Rural Black people had no land and were forced to rent land from landowners, toiling year-round yet still owning nothing; many were burdened with enormous debts.

Because Black people in cities lacked any vocational skills, they could only perform the most strenuous manual labor, yet their wages were only one-third of those of white workers. The situation became even more difficult for freed Black people, which is why, a hundred years after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans raised the slogan of "Re-Emancipation."

The slaves before me, aside from those who appeared to be on the verge of a mental breakdown, were all a motley crew of oddballs; even if I rescued them, it would be useless. Overall, they were even worse than the Black slaves of America back then, who lacked technology and relied solely on brute force.

The essence of slave emancipation is the liberation of productive forces. I would never become a tragic hero who liberates all mankind without complaint and is ultimately stabbed to death—that white-haired guy in red clothes, don't look, I'm talking about you!

As the saying goes, medicine can't cure a disease, and fire can't kill a person! I think I also need to save people who won't die—brother, shall we pass on the fire?

I stretched my limbs, which were stiff from standing for too long, and felt the scorching midday sun shining through the gaps in my armor into my clothes. The heat was getting stronger and stronger; the hottest time of day in this wilderness was about to arrive.

I walked to the edge of the slave quarters, clenched my left fist at my waist, and stood on the ground, simulating the strange feeling of charging up power. I imagined my body as a rubber band, tightening as I exerted force, constantly accumulating power.

With a low growl, my spine undulated like waves, and power surged along my spine, precisely and swiftly reaching my left fist, which slammed into the high wall that was preventing their escape with tremendous force!

The hard rammed earth wall was like a candle in the wind. It struggled for a moment, but was finally extinguished by the fierce hurricane and collapsed without any resistance, stirring up a cloud of yellow dust!

"You only have two paths before you. One is death, which is to stay here. When the territory sees you slaves, they will kill you even if you have done nothing. Because a slave who does not cause trouble is a good slave, and dead people do not cause trouble. They cannot capture me, so they can only take their anger out on you."

Upon hearing my words, a look of resentment immediately appeared in the eyes of these lowly slaves. They stared at me with a desolate yet vicious gaze, but they couldn't muster the slightest thought of confronting a powerful opponent.

These good-for-nothings, it seems they're not desperate enough, still fantasizing about hiding here as their good slaves, enjoying this peaceful slave life.