Had they not been driven to the end of the road, those silk workers and silkworm farmers would never have put down their work to protest and petition.
They no longer dared go to City Hall or the police station, so the silk workers and silkworm farmers surrounded several factory owners' mansions. Some even hurled stones, smashing the mansions' windows.
The factory owners immediately summoned their overseers and thugs to fight the workers. They had assumed they held the psychological advantage—after all, this was how they had done things for years, and no one had ever dared resist.
It was not only the factory owners who thought so; the overseers and thugs thought the same. After all, this was their job, and what set them apart from those poor wretches.
"Get back! You pack of lazy bastards! Instead of working properly, you come here to make trouble? Looking to taste the whip?"
The short overseer at the front grinned viciously. Coupled with his dark gray face, he looked exactly like a goblin from legend. Seven or eight burly men followed behind him.
Since ordinary people were not permitted to carry swords or knives in the streets at this time, the men held spiked clubs instead. The sharp steel spikes atop them proclaimed their power over life and death.
Most of the marching crowd were little more than skin and bones. If they took off their clothes, one could count every rib they had. It was the result of prolonged hunger combined with grueling labor.
At the sight of the overseers and thugs before them, the workers instinctively lowered their heads. Only a middle-aged man carrying a pickaxe continued to glare at them furiously.
The burly men naturally understood the principle of capturing the ringleader first. They immediately surrounded the middle-aged