Chapter 175: Noxus is the Fairest
"Nonsense!" Marit finally realized what was happening.
"The armor of Demacia is silver-white, and the armor of Noxus is red and black. How can you make a mistake?!"
"I..." The farmer stammered, "I... I'm color blind."
"You're a color blind man!" Marit raised the whip in annoyance and whipped him "gently".
This blow was very light for her, because the farmer was also a Noxian, so she was very polite and controlled the strength - if she was facing a Demacia farmer, her whip would be able to cut the person in two.
But Marit is a super warrior after all.
She tried to restrain the force of the whip, but it was still enough to whip the farmer to pieces.
"Ah!!" A deep bloody scar appeared on the farmer's shoulder.
Marit held up the bloody whip and asked him, "Tell me, do you know what red is now?"
"I...I..." The farmer was in so much pain that he couldn't speak and answered slowly.
Seeing this, Marit was about to whip again.
"Wait." Riven stopped her.
Riven stopped Marit, not because she couldn't bear to watch.
If she couldn't handle even this level of violence, there was no way she'd ever become a legionary commander in the Noxian army.
She stopped Marit mainly because...
"I think I know him." Riven said.
“Oh?” Marit put away the whip this time and looked at the farmer with a respectful look: “Riven, he was your childhood friend?”
“I guess so…” Riven’s thoughts went back through the years of war and returned with difficulty to her unhappy childhood in the countryside: “I think his name is… Crete?”
"Critter, right?"
Riven tried to remember the farmer 's name.
Crete was her childhood friend, and their relationship was neither too close nor too distant, but it was pretty good.
Later, she joined the army and Crete stayed in his hometown to farm, so naturally the two had no contact for a long time.
"You..." The farmer named Crete was slightly stunned.
He looked at Riven's iconic short white hair and wheat-colored skin, and couldn't help but exclaimed in surprise: "You, you are Riven?"
As a warrior personally commended by His Majesty the Emperor, Riven has long been a famous figure in her hometown of Triwell.
Especially in this small village, almost everyone knows that the poor little orphan Riven has now become the unattainable commander of the Imperial Legion.
"Oh my god, Riven, you're so rich now..."
Crete subconsciously wanted to get closer to him.
But the burning pain from the scar on his shoulder quickly brought him back to his senses.
He looked up and saw Riven riding on a majestic dragon lizard, her majestic officer armor, her domineering rune giant sword, and Marit riding on a rare magical bird beside her, with the whip in her hand still dripping with blood.
"Master Riven——"
"Welcome back to Triwell!"
Crete knelt down, prostrated himself, and showed the proper courtesy of a peasant to an officer.
"Well, get up." Riven didn't think there was anything wrong with it.
In Noxus, strength is respected and the hierarchy is clear. This is especially true in the military camp.
During the years as an Imperial officer, Riven had long been accustomed to the worship of the lower classes.
So she naturally accepted Crete's kneeling, and pursed her lips to signal him to stand up and answer her question:
"Krete, why did you run just now?"
"This, this..." Crete was so scared that his bones were shaking.
"Don't worry." Riven showed the friendly attitude of tricking villagers into leading the way in enemy territory: "I promise I won't hurt you."
"I..." Crete paused for a while before saying tremblingly, "We are afraid."
"What are you afraid of?" Riven frowned slightly. "We are soldiers of the Empire. This is within the Empire. What is there to be afraid of?"
"I'm afraid of you... ahem..." Crete tried hard to stop himself from saying anything, and finally answered with difficulty:
"Master Riven, you don't know... In recent years, the imperial army has always gone to the countryside to rob... er... to the countryside to have friendly exchanges with us."
"It's not that we don't want to entertain these brave imperial warriors, it's mainly because... they come too frequently. I, we really don't have enough food to feed everyone."
He spoke very cryptically.
But Riven still understood what he meant: "You mean... you are hiding from the grain collection team?"
Of course Riven knew that the Noxian Empire had a grain-collecting team.
She was not a fool who would rather eat meat than porridge. Of course she knew where the "inexhaustible" wine, meat and food in the military entertainment center in the city of Triwell came from.
Even when Riven was at war in the past, she had gone to the countryside to collect grain.
"But shouldn't the grain-collecting team be looking for Master Kawa when they go to the countryside?"
The Master Kava that Riven mentioned is the big landlord of this village.
This farm, and even the land in several surrounding villages, are almost all private property of his family.
Crete and the young Riven were just serfs who farmed for Master Kava.
Serfs were the private property of the landlords. They had no land of their own but only shares of land rented from the landlords.
Even their lives, property and personal freedom were completely controlled by the landlords.
So Lord Kawa is the king of this land.
But correspondingly, when the imperial army needed to go to the countryside to collect grain, they would first look for large landowners like Master Kava rather than the serfs.
This is not to say that the Noxian army cares about the lower classes and only preys on the rich and not the small ones.
The main reason was that these serfs did not have much surplus food at home, and each one was more "stingy" and "cunning" than the other.
It would be too laborious and costly for the grain-collecting teams to search every household.
So instead of robbing serfs, it is better to directly rob the rich.
Anyway, given the squirrel-like grain hoarding habits of these landlords, the imperial army could generally collect the required grain by simply eating out at the mouths of a few large households in the local area.
"Master Riven, what you are talking about happened a few years ago." Crete replied helplessly:
"Although the Empire has always fought wars with Demacia in the past, it was usually only every few years or even more than ten years before a major war took place."
"Then Master Kawa's stockpiled food can barely keep up with the army's consumption."
"But what about these years?"
"The Empire has been fighting Demacia , without stopping for even a single day."
"We are in Trivelle, close to the border. Since the war started a few years ago, more than 100,000 soldiers have been stationed here year after year..."
"According to the grain collectors , the food consumed by the army is not available in the rear, so the remaining part can only be supplied by us."
Crete became more and more absorbed in his speech, and almost forgot that he was talking to the officer:
"At first it was once a year, then twice, three times a year...even once every quarter."
"The grain collector asked Master Kawa for grain, and Master Kawa forced us to pay more rent."
"When we couldn't give him the money, he whipped us severely."
"In the end..."
Master Kava couldn't stand it anymore before the serfs were beaten to death.
"He told the tax collector that the landlords didn't have any surplus grain these days."
"He said his granary had been emptied long ago and he couldn't get anything out, so the grain collector hung him on a tree and beat him."
Master Kava was only a country landowner in Trivelle.
In front of the Noxian Imperial Army, a "little master" like him is not even as good as a fart.
So: "Later on..."
"Master Kava wanted to sell the land and run away, but over the past few years, no one wants Triwell's land anymore."
"So he simply sold the land to us at the cheapest price and fled to Piltover with his property."
Riven: “This…”
She still remembered how Master Kawa bullied the serfs when she was a child and how he used a whip to force her to work.
As a result, such a slave owner... was actually forced by the imperial army to voluntarily liberate the serfs and carry out land reform?
"We thought we had gotten a great bargain at first, but when the grain-collecting team couldn't find Master Kava and started asking us for grain... we realized that it was not easy to get this free land."
Crete became more and more emotional as he spoke:
"Alas, these bastards are so messy..."
"What did you say?!" Marit frowned and raised the whip.
"I..." Crete's face turned pale instantly.
"Let me ask you, what did you just say?" Marit asked again viciously.
"I, I..." It's all over.
Insulting an imperial soldier is a serious crime among serious crimes, and being beaten to death is the right thing to do.
“Forget it, Marit…” Riven sighed softly, “Give me some face and let him go.”
“Okay.” Marit decided to let Riven off lightly because she was Riven’s childhood friend.
So she raised her whip and said magnanimously, "Slap yourself, 20 times."
"Do you understand?"
"Understand, understand..." Crete felt as if he had been pardoned. He stood aside and slapped himself hard.
Riven looked at him with a complicated look in her eyes, but said nothing.
"You sympathize with him?" Marit still noticed her subtle emotions.
"Yeah..." Riven had no choice but to admit it.
Sympathy for the weak is not a virtue for Noxians.
It can even be said that this is a "flaw" in character.
Riven didn't want her best friend to think she was a coward.
What's more, Marit is not only her good friend, but also her subordinate.
"Stop imagining that, Riven."
Fortunately, Marit knew her well enough to understand her little "weakness":
"You don't have to sympathize with him."
"Who can he blame for the suffering he suffered today? Isn't it just himself?"
"The strong win everything, and the weak crawl as slaves. This is the law of nature."
Marit looked at the farmer who was slapping her in the face and trying to fawn on her at the same time, with a disdainful expression as if she was looking at a mouse, a low-level creature.
Compared with her and Riven, Crete is indeed a "low-level creature".
She and Riven could easily lift thousand-pound rocks with one hand, but the farmer could only swing his small hoe with all his strength.
With such a huge difference in physical fitness, how can they be the same species?
Since they are more advanced than Crete, why should Crete be equal to them and deserve their sympathy?
"We, Noxus, have always been the most fair nation."
"Just like us, Riven, I was born a noble and you were born a serf, but since you are stronger than me, you can be my superior."
Marit used herself as an example, and looked at Crete with disdain and said:
"If this guy had the courage to join the army and fight like you, Riven, and become stronger like you, and received His Majesty's commendation for his military exploits like you, then he would also be an officer and a noble imperial warrior now."
"Instead of being a poor farmer crawling at our feet like now."
"The suffering he is going through now is all because of his weakness and being a coward, isn't it?"
"Hmm..." Riven nodded blankly.
She looked down at her gorgeous legion commander's armor and her majestic dragon lizard mount - as long as one has the power, even a serf can possess these treasures.
Noxus has always been a land of the strong. The strong eat meat, the weak eat dirt, there is nothing unfair about this.
Crete doesn't deserve any sympathy at all, it's just that he is too weak.
He is so weak, yet he dares to talk behind the back about the demands of the powerful.
That is even more inconsistent with Noxian moral standards and he deserves to be slapped in the face.
It's like a pig, grunting and saying to people, you shouldn't eat my meat.
Can people sympathize with pigs? Haha.
"Ignore him," Marit said.
"Yeah." Riven watched Crete slap him, then drove the dragon lizard slowly and started: "Marit, let's go."
