Naturally, these things could not be said directly to Patriarch Wellen. After all, the Xinfei Merchant Guild had hired these farmers because of the agreement it had signed with him, helping him provide a livelihood for five thousand people in his territory.
Moreover, Xu Yi's investigations and the facts Cantona had learned in private showed that, although these five thousand people worked here and received wages from the Xinfei Merchant Guild, they were still considered subjects of Patriarch Wellen's territory. They even had to hand over more than half their wages to him.
Thus, Patriarch Wellen could punish this lazy worker without any restraint, while Cantona, however dissatisfied he was with such a slacker, still had to protect him.
After all, killing one of them would have no consequences whatsoever for Patriarch Wellen. At worst, he could simply replace him.
For Cantona, however, lazy as this man was, he had gradually become familiar with operating the farmland magic machinery over the past two weeks or so. He counted as a skilled worker.
No matter how dissatisfied Cantona was with these local farmers' attitude toward work, this man was at least useful. Replacing him would mean teaching someone else from scratch.
Looking at Patriarch Wellen's fat face, Cantona could not help feeling a pang of emotion.
This repulsive, cruel, lecherous excuse for a noble could now receive enormous returns from the Xinfei Merchant Guild every year simply because he controlled this land.
Besides the annual rent of three hundred thousand gold coins and thirty percent of the grain harvest, he took at least twenty thousand gold coins out of the twenty-five thousand paid each month to the five thousand workers, who each earned five gold coins a month. That amounted to another two hundred thousand or more a year.
By a