Mutual Aid Society

In the Scott Imperial Nation, within a sparse forest.

Large and small tattered tents had been erected across the dust-filled ground, forming a chaotic, filthy camp. A few dim yellow campfires barely dispelled the spring chill beneath the silent night sky... This was a camp that looked utterly impoverished and miserable. The fabric used for the tents was thin burlap that let the wind blow straight through, while the pots over the fires contained nothing but wild vegetables with nutritional value barely above dry grass...

It had to be admitted that this camp looked far too much like a refugee camp. Whether it was the ramshackle "architecture" or the ragged, gaunt-faced poor people, everything fit the image of refugees fleeing disaster. If not for the crude, ugly burlap flags held by every group around the fires, no one would have guessed that these starving "refugees" were actually an army.

That was right. No matter how unreliable they looked, these "refugees" truly were an army.

At least, they called themselves the "Poor People's Mutual Aid Army." They had a loose military structure and ragged marching tents.

In fact, armies like this were scattered throughout the Scott Imperial Nation. The one currently resting in the forest was the largest branch of the Mutual Aid Poor People's Army, consisting of a full thirty thousand elderly, weak, sick, and disabled people.

However, these pitiful soldiers could hardly be blamed for their ragged clothes and poor combat ability. Two months ago, this so-called Mutual Aid Society Poor People's Army had merely been a loose association known as the Mutual Aid Society. These "soldiers" had only been farmers driven to desperation by the great famine, hoping for nothing more than a bowl of rice porridge. Making them pick up hoes and pitchforks and head onto the