When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

#158 - Unfair people, come forward and listen [5k two-in-one chapter]

Boots or straw sandals crunched on the muddy ground, kicking up a lot of dust.

Countless torches, like fireflies in the night, gathered around the central wooden platform and bonfire.

A tall torch was planted at each of the four corners of the wooden platform, and three temporary megaphones made of sheet metal were placed on each side.

In front of the camp, more than ten thousand strong young men gathered; this was not just over ten thousand refugees with the old, weak, sick, and disabled, but a solid ten thousand strong young men.

Under the torches, their faces flickered uncertainly.

In the midst of the tens of thousands of refugees, more than a dozen bonfires were piled up, the raging flames crackling fiercely.

Beside each bonfire, there were people arranged by Horn, who tirelessly displayed the evidence and recounted the Duke's conspiracy.

Pieces of evidence were displayed before everyone, and names were passed around in the crowd.

In fact, when they learned about the Blue Blood Wine from Jeanne and other refugees, they were already eighty percent convinced.

Coming here was just for that last bit of uncertainty in their hearts.

But upon arriving at the scene, seeing the other victims, the physical evidence and account books brought from the monastery, the abnormal accounts given by Horn from around 1425, coupled with the memories of some local elders, that uncertainty vanished.

They were not alone; when countless testimonies gathered together, they became ironclad proof.

"Quiet!"

"Everyone be quiet!"

"The Holy Grandson is here, everyone be quiet!"

With the continuous roars of the ten-household heads, hundred-household heads, and black-clad soldiers, the crowd gradually quieted down.

Standing in front of the altar, Horn finally turned around, holding a sheet metal megaphone in his hand.

"Today, everyone has come here, I think, to seek the truth. Now, do you all know the truth?" Horn's voice, devoid of any emotion, spread around.

The refugees looked at each other, not knowing what Horn meant.

"You already know the truth, so what are you going to do about it?"

Like being doused with a bucket of cold water, the angry crowd suddenly quieted down a bit.

Yes, what to do? Did they really want to confront those terrifying Transcendent Knights?

Knowing the truth about the Blue Blood Wine and the Green-Clothed Pied Piper, what could they do? Could they possibly fight against Transcendent Knights?

On one side were the lives of their relatives and friends, and on the other side was their own life; the scales in the refugees' hearts kept swaying.

Before they could figure out the problem, a sharp-eyed refugee suddenly pointed at the wooden platform and shouted:

"Look!"

"Is that, is that Bishop Bullwerf?"

Amidst the exclamations of the refugees in the front row, a remarkable figure was escorted onto the wooden platform by the Guardsmen.

Bullwerf, the Bishop of the Jeanneburg Diocese, an upper-class religious nobleman whom the refugees dared not look up to.

Horn's voice, devoid of any emotion, sounded once again:

"Now, Bishop Bullwerf is before you. Regarding the Blue Blood Wine, he knows everything. Here are his signed confessions and testimonies. What do you want to do?"

Subtle whispers flowed among the people, but they didn't even dare to utter a single question loudly.

How many years, how many cruel massacres? How could they dare to rebel?

The refugees' fear of the knights and the empire was deeply ingrained in their bones; this was something Horn had long understood.

That was the knight in their hearts, and that knight was much harder to kill than the knights in reality.

What Horn had to do was add a bit of fuel to the fire, to make them temporarily forget the knight in their hearts, at least until dawn.

Seeing that no one responded, he scanned the crowd for a while, then pointed directly in one direction: "This believer, come up here!"

"Me?" Colton pointed at himself.

A Guards Captain stepped forward, grabbed Colton's arm, dragged him out of the crowd, and pushed him onto the wooden platform.

"What's your name?"

"I, my name is Colton."

"Can't hear you! Take this, speak louder!"

Horn handed him the sheet metal megaphone.

"My name is Colton!"

"Who did you come here for? Tell me, louder."

"For, for..." Colton's stammering voice suddenly became smooth, "For my child—Little Colton."

"He died at the Blue Blood Monastery, didn't he?"

"Yes!" Colton said through gritted teeth.

"Want revenge?"

"Want!"

"Good, I'll give you a chance." Horn took out a short dagger from his bosom and shoved it into Colton's hand, "Stab him."

Following Horn's direction, Colton saw Bishop Bullwerf on the ground. He immediately took two or three steps back, until his back pressed against the chest of the Black-Clad Guardsman.

"You, you must be joking..."

Horn didn't force him, just smiled: "Did you come alone? No one came with you?"

"No."

"Do you have a wife?"

After a full ten seconds of silence, Colton said dryly:

"Dead. After Little Colton died, she went mad and jumped off the roof and died."

Horn asked softly: "What about your father?"

"Dead. When I was little, he made us eat rice porridge, but he didn't eat it himself. He starved himself to death."

"What about your mother?"

"I never met her. Died in childbirth."

"Do you have any siblings?"

"My older brother died of illness, and my older sister was sold by my dad."

After saying all this, even the heavy breathing sounds were gone from the scene.

"So, are you willing to accept this?"

"Hey, this kind of thing..." Colton raised his head, just about to say something, but looking into Horn's eyes, he couldn't say it.

"Are you willing to accept this?"

Colton looked down at the bishop on the ground. Horn didn't say anything, but the sentence "Are you willing to accept this?" kept echoing in his ears.

Willing to accept this?

As he woke up a little from his anger, he didn't quite understand why he had to come here tonight.

He had found a way, taken out his savings of many years, and forcibly changed his household registration to a local armed farmer.

This way, he would have the opportunity to lease a farm from the Duke and manage it himself. Maybe he could marry a new wife, and if he continued, he might become a new country gentleman.

So why did he have to come here tonight?

The shouts of the refugees in his ears gradually faded away, and the crackling of the burning fires and the howling of the night wind all disappeared.

He seemed to have returned to fifteen years ago, driving a rented skinny ox, secretly taking it to eat the grass of the neighbor's house.

Salisa had recently dug up a precious Moonpetal Grass in the bushes, which sold for a lot of dinars.

Little Colton was still crying, and someone had to watch him, otherwise he would cry until he lost his voice.

When did it become like this? What did he do wrong?

Was it the lord suddenly changing the collection of physical rent? Was it that he was too tired that day and forgot to lock the door but it happened to be foggy?

Was it that day he followed the footprints, bringing the crying Salisa to the edge of the forest, but the forester and the priest refused to let them go in and look?

Lowering his head, Colton looked at Bullwerf's face. The bishop's face was covered with tears and snot, looking at him as if begging.

It was so similar. Colton was a little dazed. When his little Colton faced that meat grinder, would he have the same expression?

Colton's body gradually trembled. Under everyone's gaze, he seemed to unconsciously walk step by step towards Bullwerf, who was lying on the ground.

"I didn't do anything wrong..." His murmur turned into a hoarse roar, "I didn't do anything wrong! It's you, it's you!"

The knife stabbed fiercely into Bullwerf's throat, and bright blood gushed out like a fountain.

"Give me back my little Colton!"

"Give me back my Salisa!"

"Give me back my house!"

"Give me back my home!"

"I'll stab you to death!"

"I'll stab you to death!"

With each shout, Colton would stab down with the knife. Blood splattered everywhere, and the rose-colored blood stained the 屮-shaped cross on his chest red.

His face twisted, Colton widened his eyes.

His eyes were torn because he used too much force, and blood slowly flowed down his nose, like two lines of blood tears.

Perhaps blood flowed into his pupils, Colton's whites were full of red.

His arms kept shaking, but the fingers holding the handle of the knife were tightly gripping it, frantically and constantly raising the knife and stabbing down.

"You dog priests! You all deserve to die! You all deserve to die!"

"Little Colton, Salisa, I'm avenging you! Avenge you!"

Stabbing down knife after knife, Bullwerf quickly lost his breath, but Colton kept stabbing knife after knife, until he ran out of strength.

He sat back blankly, looking at the corpse in front of him, and cried loudly, raising his head.

The crying seemed to turn on some switch. The refugees below first sobbed softly, and then, the entire camp broke out into wailing like a flood.

Under the moonlight, in the rising flames, on this plain, the sound of crying washed over everyone like a flood.

"Crying, how many times have we cried?"

Standing in front of the wooden platform, Horn raised the tin megaphone and roared at the refugees below.

"Look at us, look at us, what kind of ghosts do we look like now?!

Before, who of us didn't have a good life? Even if the family was a little poor and couldn't get enough to eat, at least there were relatives and friends around, and there was always a way to survive."

Horn's voice became louder and louder, and his tone became higher and higher. Then, as if roaring, he questioned: "Tell me, where are they now?"

After pausing for a full second, Horn spoke again, but this time it was a little sad: "Where are they?"

Yes, where are they? The refugees followed with some trance, where did they all go?

I don't know when, they left one after another, disappeared, and never came back, where did they go?

"You already know what the Duke wants to do."

"He wants us to endure hunger and cold, we endure."

"He wants us to be beasts of burden, we do."

"But now, are we still going to be like pigs and sheep, sending our cubs to their mouths?"

"Are we going to sit on the ground and watch the butcher knife fall on our necks?"

"Tonight I stand here, my mother Messala asked me to hand these exhibits to you, what is it for?"

Speaking of this, Horn laughed mockingly: "What for? I don't know... I don't know if what I'm facing is ten thousand living people, or ten thousand cowardly pigs and sheep!"

"Five hundred years, for five hundred years, what have we encountered?

Endless oppression, endless injustice, endless massacres! But what have we done? We have done nothing!"

"Nothing!"

Horn walked back and forth on the wooden platform, waving his fist, and around the dozen or so bonfires, one victim after another was pushed up to tell their experiences.

"We changed beer to bitter wine, we changed wheat bread to black bread, the fields are shrinking day by day, and relatives are falling one by one.

This is the land of our Thousand River Valley people, but we are wandering in our own homes!"

Horn stood on the edge of the wooden platform, reaching out to them, and roaring sadly:

"Believers, we have nothing left... nothing left!

Dignity is gone, the future is gone, freedom is gone, even our next generation is gone, we have nothing.

All we have left is the head on our shoulders! Are you willing to let it go like this? Forget everything and continue to live?"

In Horn's continuous shouts, the sadness in the eyes of the refugees gradually turned into anger. They gasped, staring at Bullwerf's body on the stage.

First, the first stone was thrown at Bullwerf's body, and then countless refugees rushed to the stage.

At this time, the Guards could no longer control it. The refugees pushed away the front row of guards and poured onto the wooden platform.

They punched and kicked the still-cooling corpse on the ground, while some people cried under the stage, some screamed like venting, and some watched coldly from the side.

"Brother will avenge you! Avenge you!"

"Die! Die! Die for me!"

In a mess, Horn was still shouting in the crowd.

"Tell me, why are you here?" Horn's eyes were red. He stood on the side of the wooden platform and shouted to the refugees below, "Isn't it for your grievances and relatives and friends?

Living, living is of course good, but we will eventually die one day! When you die, when your soul is waiting in the world to go to the Fire Prison or Heaven.

Your flesh and blood, our relatives, their souls will come forward and ask you, what did you die for?

How should you answer? Die of illness? Die of old age? Die of hunger? Be beaten to death by the lord's whip?"

Horn raised the tin megaphone and roared:

"No, no—tell them:

I died for fairness, I died for freedom, I died for justice, I died for the grievances of you who died, I died for the well-being of those who are alive.

I fall, and more Thousand River Valley people will raise my banner!

Believers, raise the banner of salvation, we will declare war on demons and monsters! We will avenge demons and monsters!

We will fight them in the fields, we will fight them in the rivers, we will fight them in the mountains, even if we die, we will fight them in the Fire Prison.

"We must fight on, fight on, until they disappear from our world, until that moment, the true millennial kingdom will arrive!"

Saying this, Horn's chest heaved violently, and his previously high-pitched voice became low.

"You may ask, what about the devils? What about the demons? Who are they? Where are they? Instead of asking me, ask yourselves.

Where did our simple, warm homes go? Where did our gray-haired parents go? Where did our crying children go?

Tell me, where did they go?"

The crowd, pushed by the Guards, gradually retreated from the wooden platform, but they could still hear Horn's shouts.

Horn gasped for breath, slowly walking to the front of the wooden platform.

He looked around at the crowd. Obviously, a corpse could not fully vent their anger. They were all waiting for Horn.

Waiting for Horn to say the last sentence, but Horn wanted them to say it themselves!

"Countless rolling heads, endless grievances!"

"Devils... demons... can't you see them?"

"They are right there!"

"In that castle, on that throne!"

"In that church, under that icon!"

"Tell me, who are they?"

Horn tilted his head, making a listening gesture towards them: "Who are they?!"

"Knights!"

"Dukes and the Empire!"

"The Church! And the King!"

Mixed with curses, it started sporadically, but later this roar became louder and louder, the vagrants shouting together in anger and fanaticism.

"Can't hear!" Horn's face twisted, shouting hoarsely at the vagrants below, "Tell me, who owes the blood debt!"

"Bishops and nobles!"

"Bishop! Noble!"

"Bishop—Noble—"

In the chaos, the wave-like shouts of the vagrants gradually became orderly, turning into two words that had been recited countless times.

"When Adam and Eve were farming, did the noble lords sit in castles and churches to watch?"

Horn walked to the left side of the wooden platform and roared at the vagrants.

"When houses and money were taken away, did the bishops and monks put in more labor?"

Horn turned and walked to the right side of the wooden platform and roared at the vagrants.

"Those who grow wheat can only eat bran, and those who weave cloth can only wear rags, this is our life!"

Returning to the center from both sides, Horn shouted at the crowd with a twisted face, "Enough! Enough! Enough! I said enough!"

Horn's voice passed through the tin loudspeaker, but then stopped abruptly.

A night breeze blew, scattering the echoes in the night sky, shaking the light on the torches. Horn closed his eyes and opened his arms.

The world became quiet, with only the sound of wind and the crackling of flames.

More than ten thousand young and strong people, not a single one spoke, their red eyes were all fixed on Horn.

The moonlight shone on his shoulders, Horn slowly opened his eyes, and his eyes shone with the light of magic.

There was no dancing, no strange screams, no self-proclaimed "I am the Holy Father".

But when Horn spoke, everyone could hear that his voice was overlapping with the gods, and countless sacred and solemn voices were speaking with him:

"Blood covers the clouds, sharpen the knives and weapons, Heaven sends the Holy Grandson to kill the unjust."

"Unjust people, come forward and listen, kill all the unjust to achieve peace!"

Drawing out the Blood-Covered Cloud from his waist, Horn pointed it at Jeanne d'Arc Fortress.

"The old gods are dead, a new king shall rise, the stars are in place, and the Middle Earth will be auspicious!"

"All believers, take up your swords, follow me..."

The red light on the Blood-Covered Cloud almost dyed the sky red, Horn's eyes were about to split:

"Sweep!"

"Away!!"

"Demons!!!"

"Devils!!!!"