Xiping.
"All of you, get out here!!!"
At that shrill cry, a group of skeletal people emerged from their "houses."
If they could really be called houses.
These houses were merely... things hastily erected beside the fields.
Wood served as supports, with leaves hung over them. They had no doors, no windows, no foundations...
Even the Wa Island Barbarians who had previously come to offer tribute probably would not have lived in anything so crude.
Most of those emerging from these makeshift dwellings were utterly exhausted, their eyes lifeless and their bodies all skin and bones.
Their hair hung loose. There were men and women, the old and the weak, all walking out in ragged clothes before neatly forming a line.
Around them stood several raised platforms built from earth and timber, resembling beacon towers in shape, yet entirely different.
Several burly men stood atop the platforms, weapons faintly visible in their hands.
A young nobleman sat on a fine horse, waiting calmly in the distance. He was not even particularly willing to come closer.
A household slave rode toward them at a gallop, dragging a half-dead man behind him with a rope looped around the man. By the time he reached the assembled people, the man being dragged barely moved.
His face vicious, the household slave cursed furiously, "This is what happens when you try to escape!"
"This man was in the neighboring fields! He tried to flee at night and was caught by the County Office!"
"Your tribes have already been destroyed! Your chieftains have already gone to Luoyang! You are all defeated captives! Sparing your lives and letting you farm and work is already a blessing as great as Heaven!"
"If anyone dares commit such an outrageous act again, you will meet the same fate as him!!"