Lord's Dispute

After helping that woman out, Zhou Ming was smoothly fired from the Construction Site and returned to his rented room in high spirits.

Of course, the foreman still paid him his wages. It was not out of pity, but because the work Zhou Ming had done alone these past few days was nearly equivalent to that of one and a half brick carriers. He could even keep it up for more than ten days straight. The foreman had rarely seen anyone with such terrifying strength and endurance, so how could he dare withhold Zhou Ming's pay?

Actually, Zhou Ming was not that strong. In the last few days, he had truly been close to collapsing. Fortunately, while playing Zhang Ergou's Counterattack Life in immersion mode, he had picked up a few tricks. By resorting to shameless methods like knocking people out from behind, building a harem, and forcibly taking what he wanted, he earned 3S ratings in three consecutive rounds and raked in over 8,000 Achievement Points.

He exchanged all those Achievement Points for Strength Point Cards, adding 8 points to his Strength attribute. Carrying bricks at the Construction Site naturally became much easier.

After returning to his rented room, he spent a day cleaning it inside and out. Then he went to a nearby supermarket and bought huge quantities of instant noodles, biscuits, bread, ham sausages, and other convenient foods. There was enough to last him one or two months.

After taking a comfortable hot shower, Zhou Ming lay comfortably on the bed, feeling refreshed all over. He closed his eyes and opened the Game Panel in his mind.

"System, enter the game."

"Beep~"

"Player is entering the game..."

Game Background:

This was an absurd, ignorant, and conservative era. Lords were selfish, knights obsessed with force, farmers went hungry, priests spread hypocrisy, and slaves barely clung to life... In this world plagued by constant war, rampant disease, and bandits everywhere, how would you, the ordinary Son of a Farmer from Rose Town in Glan Territory, become involved in this Lord's Dispute...

"Waaah! Waaah!"

A crisp, resounding cry rang out from a dilapidated, crooked mud house and spread throughout all of Rose Town.

"@#￥#...￥%" said a pale-skinned woman with dark blond hair weakly.

"@#￥#@!￥@#!" A curly-haired white man excitedly held the baby in his arms, babbling away in obvious excitement.

What are these two even saying?

Zhou Ming, now in the state of a baby, was utterly baffled. But seeing the joy on the faces of this man and woman, both with typical white features, he knew they had to be his parents.

If I can't understand them, I'll learn slowly. I'm just a baby right now anyway.

After drinking the breast milk fed to him by the white woman, Zhou Ming felt his head growing heavy and slipped into a sweet sleep.

In the blink of an eye, three years passed.

Sitting on a round log stump in front of a fence, Zhou Ming swung his little legs as he surveyed the world around him.

Fields of lush green wheat seedlings, a peaceful little town, clear streams, and a castle towering over the hilltops...

"What a world like paradise."

Yes.

If not for the lord and knights stationed in that castle, the hateful tax collectors and the lord's steward, and the bandits scattered throughout the mountains who occasionally came to harass the town... this place truly would have been paradise.

Zhou Ming's name in this world was Ryan. His father was Derek, his mother was Julina, and he also had a one-year-old little sister with the lovely name Alice.

They were a family of four that was fairly happy.

But that happiness rested on the fact that the weather had been favorable these past few years and the harvests decent, allowing the family to barely keep themselves fed.

His father Derek, a farmer, rented one hundred mu of land from Baron Connor.

One-third of those hundred mu was left fallow, while the other two-thirds were used to grow barley, Oats, wheat, rye, and other crops, along with a small amount of peas and fodder grass.

Crop yields in this world were generally very low. In relatively good years, seeds brought back around four times their quantity. In other words, planting one jin of seeds would yield four to five jin of grain.

That harvest might have looked decent, but half of it had to be handed over to the lord as land rent.

Besides the lord's rent, the church also collected a tithe. Though it was not much, whatever remained could only ensure that farmers did not starve to death.

On top of that, Derek was obligated to perform Zhou Labor for the lord. Three days every week, he had to do odd jobs for the lord—plowing, hauling, sowing, threshing, and storing grain—before he could drag his exhausted body back to work his own fields.

After completing his labor service, Derek also had to serve in the military for the lord. Whenever Baron Connor went to war with Baron Howard or Baron Garcia from the areas surrounding Glan Territory, Derek was obligated to answer the call, stand at the very front of the formation, and serve as cannon fodder for the knights behind him.

Over the past two years, Derek had been conscripted twice. The first time was against Baron Garcia to the west. After their lucky victory, he received a small bag of black flour as a reward. It was flour ground from rye, and the black bread made from it was as hard as bricks.

The second time, against a band of roaming bandits, he was not so fortunate. An arrow struck his right hand. Though it did not penetrate deeply, it still affected his ability to work normally for three months, and even now it had not fully healed.

High rents, heavy labor duties, and dangerous military service would have been bad enough. But farmers like Derek were also subjected to all kinds of bizarre taxes, countless in name and so precise that they could be levied on a single chicken, a single egg, or a single piece of firewood.

Fish in the river could not be caught, wild beasts in the mountains could not be hunted, rabbits in the fields could not be trapped, and even if the lord's pigeons were ruining the crops in your field, you could not touch them... because all of it belonged to the lord.

Even Derek himself could not leave this town as he pleased or marry off his daughter as he pleased...

In short, for Derek, aside from obediently farming, paying taxes, and performing labor and military service, everything else was forbidden and impossible unless the merciful lord decided to show kindness.

Zhou Ming was utterly shocked that this feudal serf system, which squeezed farmers to the absolute limit and was even somewhat more miserable than slavery, where people were regarded as private property, could exist in this world.

Weren't those lordly masters afraid that one day, when the farmers were desperate and furious, they would join hands, swarm forward, and tear them to pieces?

But...

Looking at that tall, sturdy castle, those knights clad head to toe in gleaming armor, and Derek's malnourished, frail body...

With farmers in such condition, even if they gathered a thousand of them, they probably could not take that towering castle defended by only ten knights.

Zhou Ming frowned deeply.

This was difficult—truly difficult. This map practically gave the people at the bottom no way to survive. Compared to these lordly masters, Li Shouzhen in Zhang Ergou's Counterattack Life was practically as merciful as a bodhisattva. Zhang Ergou's situation had been far, far better than his own.

I'll take it one step at a time for now.