Fairy tales were always found in storybooks; reality was often filled with helplessness.
The arrival of Earthlings—at least, East Country People—gave the local victims opportunities and time to develop, along with a new civilization and new technology. But it seemed that once some of them gained power and formed a society, they reenacted Earth's brutal history of development.
Slavery, feudalism, capitalist exploitation, theocracy, technological revolutions—when all of it was mixed together, who knew what the world would become?
Salt City merely displayed one possibility: a strange social structure combining violence, new capital, new technology, and compradors.
"After all, this is their world."
Ten years had passed, and the new generation had indeed grown up. But it seemed that some of them had grown crooked.
Just as Big Cat had said, when the world was like this, when life was like this, what could any individual change?
"Perhaps I really can change something."
Thinking it over and hesitating, Lu PingAn said nothing.
At the very least, for now, all he could do was protect himself.
"...Let's not think that far ahead. First, let's revise the Rebirth Merchant Guild's reputation. In an era like this, being too 'kind' may simply make you a beacon that attracts Evil Wolves."
Just as that ordinary clerk had said, these local "Persons in Charge" did not dare smash the pirates' money-laundering shops, touch the branch churches' faith monopolies, or provoke the agent shops of hostile races like the Eight-Clawed. But "ordinary merchant guilds," guilds that honestly did business and reasoned with people, were the most delectable lambs.
Especially since many of those "honest people" were human forces. They were used to reasoning, used to settling disputes through lawsuits. Even when something happened, they would hunt down the real culprit instead of, like certain bastards, directly massacring