Chapter 313 — What He Saw and Heard

The wineskin passed silently among the homeless. By the feeble firelight, Suojilin could make out each of their faces—some crisscrossed with deep wrinkles, some already suffering frostbite, some looking somewhat younger but still moving with the frailty of old age. They were wrapped in ragged cotton coats, or merely in heaps of tattered cloth no longer recognizable as clothing, and a foul odor rose from them: these people clearly had no chance to bathe.

"A mouthful of liquor warms you right up," one homeless man said in a hoarse voice.

The wineskin finally came back to Suojilin. He gave it a shake and was surprised to find there was still a little left inside.

The man sitting across the fire said: "Save some. Who knows, one day it might save your life."

Suojilin silently put the wineskin back into his bosom, then softly sighed: "Truly a cold winter night..."

"You talk all fancy-like," the homeless man beside him chuckled. "But it sure is cold."

The man across the fire grumbled: "Last winter wasn't this cold."

Someone nearby immediately mocked: "Last winter you still had a house, of course you weren't cold!"

"Shut up!"

Suojilin listened, then suddenly looked up and chimed in curiously: "Where's your house?"

The man sitting across the fire answered dejectedly: "The knight lord took it a while back... I owed the knight lord five years' rent and couldn't pay, so he took the house and the land too."

Suo Jilin found himself falling silent.

But the man across the campfire did not stop. As if recalling his own "good old days" of last winter, he began muttering again: "I had a house last year, and a little plot of land... I even had a wife!"

"His wife died years ago," someone beside Suo Jilin whispered. "His mind's not right anymore."

"It's all because of the 'Tenant Rent Amnesty Act,'" said a young man poking at the fire. "Nothing good ever comes from being mixed up in it."

"'Tenant Rent Amnesty Act'?" Suo Jilin blinked, clearly having never heard of this law.

In the Kingdom of Ansu, landowning nobles of count rank and above could promulgate a certain degree of "private law" within their own domains. Depending on the rank of their title, the scope of laws they could enact varied: some could set tax rates, some could mint coinage, some could dictate inheritance rights over land. Apart from a vague, overarching kingdom code, the legal statutes across the nobles' domains were a tangled, chaotic mess, at times even contradicting one another. These haphazard laws were not only a challenge merchants and adventurers had to face when traveling between territories, but also a great source of trouble for outsiders like Suo Jilin who were unfamiliar with local customs.

"It's a law Count Berry enacted ten years ago," the young man said. "The count allows those who rent land to fall behind on their tenant rent without suffering flogging or property confiscation in the first year of arrears. But in the second year of arrears, they must pay double the rent; in the third year, double again; in the fourth, double once more... and if they still cannot pay by the fifth year, their house and land are taken from them. The count calls this a mercy, giving those who fail to pay rent due to an occasional bad harvest a chance to repay their debts. That's why it's called the 'Amnesty Act.' If someone cannot pay for five years running, then they are truly lazy and stupid, unworthy of continuing to farm his land..."

The man beside Suo Jilin, wrapped in a tattered cotton coat, sighed. "But few ever manage to pay it off. Most of us end up like this after five years."

It was a trap! The simplest trap imaginable!

How could a peasant household ever repay arrears when the rent doubled year after year? Never mind the rate by the fifth year, which climbed to more than ten times the original—even by the second year, they could hardly pay. It was utterly impossible for them to save surplus grain or coin to cope with the skyrocketing rent of the second year!

Before this act was implemented, falling behind on rent meant only a flogging and the confiscation of part of one's property. But after the act took effect, anyone in arrears was destined to lose all their land and their house. Yet ordinary peasant households could not begin to grasp this.

Because they could neither read nor count... and they had no spare energy or wits to think about anything beyond their labor in the fields.

In despair they faced debts impossible to repay, and in despair they lost their land and their homes—yet in the end they could not even understand why it had happened.

Suo Jilin glanced at the small campfire before him and suddenly felt that those memories in his mind—of seven hundred years ago, when everyone had joined hands and huddled together for warmth—were growing blurred.

The man across the fire was still muttering under his breath: "I had a little plot of land back then, right by the river... and I had a wife!"

Someone nudged him. "All right, enough. Talk too much and the wind gets in."

"Time to add more firewood..."

"Don't put it all in. Dawn's still a long way off."

"When it's light, let's head to the Yaochen Church. Get there early and the porridge will still be warm."

"Don't go too early either. The new priest doesn't stir the pot much when he serves, and he's in the habit of scooping from the top. Go too early and all you get is thin broth."

Suo Jilin listened in silence, and with the keen hearing of an elf, he heard the sound of lyre and tambourine from the distant castle finally fall quiet.

He did not sleep all night, until a faint thread of light appeared on the horizon, and the radiance of the Giant Sun filtered through the clouds and spilled into the town.

The church bell rang out in the distance. Suo Jilin stood up, and those homeless souls who had barely managed a night's sleep struggled one by one to their feet: the church bell was the signal that roused them.

The campfire had all but died out, and the little residual warmth left could scarcely reach the people gathered around it. The vagrants worked their frozen limbs, hoping to recover a bit of strength before the sun truly rose—it would help them hold on to the food they received at the church door. But when everyone had risen, one man remained seated where he was.

It was the man who had sat across the fire the night before.

Someone stepped forward and gave him a push, and the hunched body toppled to the ground: he was dead.

The homeless watched in silence. Someone sighed. "We were short a few pieces of firewood last night."

"He had his own house last year..."

Suo Jilin's face was expressionless. Those who seven hundred years ago had walked hand in hand through darkness and hardship—was this the kingdom their descendants had built?

He turned and walked toward the street that would soon be lit by the sun.

He had to get back to the Cecil Territory as quickly as possible.