The 421st Division's Ambition

No one could blame the Black locals for resisting so fiercely. East Africa's reputation among Black people in Africa, if not utterly steeped in evil, was at least enough to make children stop crying at night.

The closer Black people lived to East Africa, the more they feared it. East Africa was like a pixiu beast—taking in but never giving out. Take the former borders of the Kingdom of Congo: there had once been many Black people within East African territory, yet now traces of them could scarcely be found.

Naturally, this was partly because large numbers of Black people had fled to the Kingdom of Congo and other regions. But people only knew the objective fact that the Black population under East African rule had greatly diminished. Coupled with the embellishment and exaggeration of those who fled, East Africa naturally became a "den of demons."

East Africa was certainly not that unbearable, but when some people recounted their experiences, they always liked adding their own subjective assumptions to the mix.

That said, Portugal did indeed treat Black people "well." Of course, that goodness was relative. As one of the earliest global colonial empires,

the Portuguese, through centuries of accumulation, had indeed found it easier to integrate with the local people. Angola now had over a hundred thousand descendants of Portuguese and local indigenous people, who also formed one of the important foundations of Portuguese rule over Angola.

These mixed-race descendants were, in fact, also part of Angola's ruling class. They benefited from Angola's colonial system, so they were bound to support the Kingdom of Portugal's rule over Angola.

After being talked down, Caster's emotions had stabilized. He said to Hans Griffin, "Forget it. It's just that this is the first time I've encountered something like this, so I couldn't