GAMMT - Chapter 20
Chapter 20: Scum
Just as the guard captain had expected, the people at the farm were anxiously awaiting the steward's approval for the harvest when they saw the airship return.
"Did they forget something?"
"I don't know. We should send it over quickly. We can't have that young master coming to get it himself."
"This young master is trouble. Just as he was about to board the ship, he grabbed my hand and told me to keep the lamb for him. He said he wants a whole roasted lamb another day."
In truth, this Young Master Keli hadn't done much, having been there for less than a day. But from his appearance and his attitude toward the guards, they knew he was a handful. With that arrogant, extravagant, and debauched demeanor, if he weren't someone unimportant to the family, his tail would be pointing to the sky.
This kind of young master was nothing but trouble.
While they were frantically searching for what might have been left behind, eager to express-mail it to him, the airship landed. The moment the door opened, the faces of the tenant farmers and workers fell, but they struggled to remain calm as they asked the guard captain what was going on.
"What's wrong with the young master? Why is he back again?"
The guard captain wanted to say, I'd like to know why he's back again too. With a wooden expression, he said, "The young master was accidentally injured within the family and has come here to recuperate."
Everyone: "…"
He was gone for less than an hour and already got into a fight?
We weren't wrong. He's a troublemaker.
Just as everyone was thinking how terrible it was that the scum young master had returned, something even worse happened.
The bruised and swollen scum young master took an urn out of his backpack.
Everyone: "?"
Then they watched as he pulled a contract out of the urn.
"Well, this farm is mine now. I want some ginger milk curd. Do you have any fresh, aged ginger? Go on, dig some up for me right now. And go milk the cows!"
Everyone: "!!!"
The people of the farm were on the verge of a breakdown, but legally, their master had now completely changed to Xie Keli.
"What are you looking at me for? Go!"
"You're the ones who do the work. Do I have to teach you how to harvest? Get everything back here for me! I'm short on cash!"
The scum young master had a foul temper. He scowled and shouted impatiently. Seeing his ugly expression, the workers were furious but dared not speak out. They could only meekly swarm out to begin the harvest.
Over by the storehouse, a few of the more experienced old tenant farmers began to confer.
"Why don't we harvest all the wheat too? It's ripe anyway. The sooner we harvest, the better."
"But he didn't say to harvest the wheat just now. What if…"
"What if? Do you think we won't get yelled at as long as we don't make a mistake? These noble young masters scold people based on their mood. And with this sudden change of ownership, who knows what kind of trouble he'll stir up later? Will he dock our wages? It's better to prepare early than to work for nothing. From what I can see, this one isn't too sharp."
Experience counts. The oldest tenant farmer stroked his beard while picking up a hoe and whispered to the others, "Besides, he did casually say to get everything back here for him."
Hearing this, everyone immediately understood. Ah, that's right. They could just play dumb later and pretend they thought he had ordered it. They would take the opportunity to harvest all the crops, get their wages as soon as possible, and then decide whether to quit based on how utterly terrible this person's character was.
As they headed out with their tools, they happened to see the scum young master standing with hands on hips, ordering around those high-and-mighty guards.
"What are you looking at me for? What, you want to stand guard over me?"
"I'm injured. Go get me some fresh pig trotters to help me recover."
The guards were in an awkward position. Where were they supposed to get fresh pig trotters?
Wouldn't they have to catch a pig?
The guard captain said, "I'll have them go catch one right now…"
Fu Chuan's brow furrowed. "They have to work the fields. You all are standing around with nothing to do. Can't even catch a pig? What, am I not worthy of ordering you around?"
The guards: "…"
Helpless, they had no choice but to bite the bullet and enter the pigsty… Soon, squeals filled the air as pigs ran wild, their hooves kicking up filth and muck. The guards, unwilling to expend their mental power on catching pigs, chased them clumsily, cursing inwardly as they ran: Damn it, this scum of a young master!
The tenant farmers and workers suddenly felt much better.
This scum was so inhumane even to the guards, let alone to them, the lowly tenants.
While acting the part of a monster, Fu Chuan was observing the guards' pig-catching performance.
Through their actions, she could judge their general attributes.
At the very least, she could determine their agility and from that, estimate their Arcane levels.
The guard captain was higher, a 10th-level Arcanist, while the guards under him were mostly around the seventh or eighth level.
Although their levels seemed low, their rate of progress was normal for people in their "working-class" position. Fu Chuan's current level was 3, but the experience needed to reach level 4 was 1,000. This meant she would have to kill 100 ordinary bandits or dozens of Wasteland Wolves to level up.
One could only imagine how many small monsters and people these guards had killed over the past decade or so to reach their current levels.
Of course, the children of nobles could be protected while being "fed experience" in dungeons, something these guards couldn't compare to. That was why the likes of Xie Lin, whom Fu Chuan had dealt with before, seemed dim-witted but had high Arcane levels. Their skills were just so poor that they were soundly beaten by a level-3 Fu Chuan.
"This is a pain. I can still buy an Eagle Eye Gem, but a 10th-level Eagle Eye Arcane skill book costs a fortune. Otherwise, I could buy it and see their attributes directly."
As Fu Chuan lamented this, she assessed the strength of all the combat personnel on the farm. With a clear picture in her mind, she glanced at the twelve million copper coins she had left and sighed.
As the sun set, the motivation of workers eager to get paid was limitless. Fearing trouble, the hundred or so tenant farmers and workers put in every ounce of their strength. They didn't even stop for dinner, spending the entire day harvesting all the crops on the farm. When they returned to the farmstead under the twilight glow, their heads were buzzing collectively.
Because the pigsty, cattle pen, sheepfold, and chicken and duck coops were all empty.
Wait, what? Where did all the livestock go?
They then went to the courtyard by the kitchen, and a group of tenant farmers nearly fainted from the shock.
They had all been killed. Except for the young ones, nearly all the adult livestock had been slaughtered, their hides stripped clean. A huge pile of pelts filled the warehouse.
My god, there were hundreds of them.
At that moment, they saw the scum young master, fresh from a bath and wearing a robe, standing there with hands on hips, giving orders. He wanted all the meat vacuum-packed to be sold directly to the city market another day. He wanted to earn back the money he had spent as quickly as possible.
"As for the young ones, we'll sell them to other farms in a few days."
The tenant farmers had never in their lives seen such a selfish, cruel, and money-grubbing person. Their faces turned ashen, but they were powerless to stop it. They could only watch numbly. Then, Fu Chuan turned and saw that they had harvested the entire farm. As expected, she became furious, yelling at them for their insubordination and asking if they wanted to be fired.
The old tenant farmer clutched his chest, nearly coughing up blood from anger. He numbly retorted that he had listened to his words and thought it was what he wanted.
"You! You old man! You did it on purpose!"
Fu Chuan feigned anger, scolded them for a bit, then walked away in a huff.
The group of tenant farmers and the kitchen staff exchanged helpless glances.
With a master like this, they probably couldn't stay at this farm any longer. But where could farmers like them go? With families to support, they had two choices: either eat shit to make a living, or become the shit they step on.
This world… was too damn hard.
Fu Chuan went up to the second floor. Looking down at the dejected tenants, she rubbed her face with a helpless expression.
In a world like this, who was truly free?
She, who had been praised as the number one good kid in her neighborhood since childhood, had never received glares as intense as the ones those tenants had just given her in her entire life.
"I hope they can hold on for a few more days."
Down in the kitchen, the tenants were indeed preparing to quit that very night and leave. They felt that such a cruel boss would surely never pay them their wages. It was better to leave sooner rather than be further enslaved by him.
But the head cook suddenly stopped the old tenant farmer. "Lao Zhang, don't be in such a hurry to leave. Eat first."
"Eat what? I have no appetite. Sigh."
"What's the rush? Look at the stove. All that is to be cooked. Not everything was packed up."
"What? You're that bold, you dare…"
"Pah, what nonsense are you talking about? He ordered it. He specifically said it was for you all to eat."
The old tenant farmer looked skeptical, then thoughtful. "Could it be that he wants to use this good food and drink as an excuse to get out of paying our wages?"
It wasn't unheard of for such a rotten thing to happen. They knew of other farms where this had occurred. They'd even heard of a tenant farmer in dire straits who had committed suicide with his entire family over it.
The head cook frowned. "That I don't know. But what I think about this person… based on my observations, let me tell you, when they were slaughtering those animals earlier, he didn't even watch. Instead, he had me feed them wine to get them drunk before killing them. I thought it was strange. That wine isn't cheap; the old steward treasured it. He said he was afraid it would be too noisy and annoying… but with my years of experience, I think this person actually can't stand such bloodshed. It means that deep down, he's actually soft-hearted."
The old tenant farmer wasn't entirely convinced, but upon careful thought… it seemed that aside from being verbally critical and quick to curse, the scum young master had one good point: he hadn't given the few pretty young women on the farm a second glance.
Normally, this was the worst and most common vice of these noble young masters. Countless daughters of tenant farmers on other farms had been taken advantage of.
But not this one.
He had looked at the potatoes more often than he had looked at the girls.
"Let me think about it again… Forget it. Even if we don't eat, it's not like he'll give us our wages. It's not up to us anyway, so why think about it? Let's eat, and eat a lot! Let's eat our money's worth!"
The old tenant farmer was, after all, a poor farmer. He couldn't fathom the source of Xie Keli's vile behavior and could only assume it was his nature. But he was indeed starving, so the group decided to eat their fill.
To hell with it. They would eat for a whole day and night and make this stingy scum's heart ache!
Of course, all these events were relayed by the guard captain to Xie An. Xie An was already at a loss for words and unwilling to waste any more effort on this unpresentable illegitimate son. In any case, he had already judged this trash son to be extremely easy to control and not much of a threat. He figured the rest of the family had likely seen it too, given how reckless he was, so they had all quieted down.
Fu Chuan was not someone whose rational judgment was swayed by emotions. After putting on the performance that was most beneficial to her, she stopped caring what the tenants thought. In the dead of night, she changed her appearance, then secretly left the farm, arranging to meet at a transfer station on the outskirts of the city where it bordered Jingyang.
Most of the things she needed were on the black market, but her time was tight. Because her objective was clear, she didn't need to go into the city to buy them. Since these were black market dealers, using a cloud locker for pickup was untrustworthy; they had to trade face-to-face.
Fu Chuan wore a mask, which was nothing unusual to the other party. Upon meeting, they didn't even size her up. Maintaining their professional etiquette, they lowered their eyes and handed over the goods.
"One F-class YK Version Energy Core, one low-grade single-person airship. As per the negotiated price, the total is 12 million copper coins. This is the energy core. The airship is over there. Please inspect them."
Fu Chuan first inspected the energy core, then looked at the two-meter-long, ordinary, chubby, oval-shaped Flying Fish Airship parked nearby. After confirming that the engine and other parts were new, she handed over a check directly.
The other party was somewhat surprised, but a check was indeed a more convenient method of transaction than a transfer, as it cut off the source trail better than cash, and it could be verified. He took out a device, scanned it, and after confirming its authenticity, turned and left without another word.
After getting her things, Fu Chuan boarded the airship. She was actually a little excited. Flying an airship in a game was different; it didn't require complex operations, just a joystick to control direction and so on. But in reality… she took out the manual from the side and studied it for a while before beginning the steps one by one.
Whirrr~~~ The wings of the Flying Fish began to flap. It then lifted off, and… flew out, wobbling unsteadily.
The station staff: "?"
Are they drunk, flying this late at night?
It couldn't be that in this day and age, there was still some country bumpkin who didn't know how to fly this kind of low-grade airship…
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