Chapter 1184
“Burn it all to ashes!”
“Fiery Fist Hassan…”
Eivass murmured the name. He had more than just heard of him. Judging by the sequence of events, their group had actually come following Fiery Fist Hassan – or more accurately, they had come following the Fire Tetrahedron in his possession.
Although Eivass no longer intended to obtain that fragment of the Geometric Heavenly Envoy, as the Water Attribute fragment was clearly more valuable, and he had already figured out where to obtain the Heavenly Envoy fragment that Leah would use.
“By the sound of it,” Eivass said with a hint of interest, “he’s the leader of the rebel army that you’re sponsoring?”
To be remembered by a merchant of Grandet’s caliber and discussed with such enthusiasm by someone of Eivass’s level meant he was no minor figure. Even if he was a minor figure, he must be his “masterpiece,” a fulcrum capable of moving a huge stone.
“He’s considered a legend in these deserts.”
Grandet’s voice was deep and gentle. “You must also know that he is an Anxi, and moreover, of slave origin…”
“Yes,” Eivass nodded. “I heard he’s a dark-skinned, skinny Snake Person.”
Given the characteristics of the Snake People, if they did not eat sufficiently, or even overeat, before reaching adulthood, they would become quite ugly. Furthermore, their bodies would be thin and short, leading to a decline in their social status within Snake People society. As a slave, he naturally would not have had access to any nutritious gourmet food. Thus, Eivass could roughly imagine his appearance.
Grandet hummed and continued, “In Anxi, even Snake People of slave origin actually have an opportunity for social mobility. As long as they develop into Snake People youths with good appearance and physique through the ‘overeating’ trait before adulthood, they can be chosen as priestesses by the Snake People Temple, which worships beauty. The Snake People will provide funds to buy them from the Lord.
According to Anxi regulations, children born to slaves are also the property of their masters, just as the offspring of cattle and sheep raised by herders belong to the herders. All slaves without a contract master belong to the Lord. Even all slaves in the hands of contract masters are still on ownership to the Lord, with the contract master only having ‘secondary possession rights.’ Their agreement or disagreement is not the final say.
Therefore, the Snake People do not need to purchase them from their original contract masters. From this perspective, if a slave is taken away by the Temple, it is equivalent to the contract master losing a slave that could be passed down to their descendants in the future. Thus, contract masters will try to ensure their Snake People slaves do not eat enough… thereby allowing them to hold onto their descendants for a long time.”
“…So, Fiery Fist Hassan was a Snake Person slave who wasn’t allowed to eat his fill?” Eivass asked.
Grandet sighed. The cunning and callous merchant seemed to possess a genuine touch of pity at this moment. “His situation was even more peculiar. Because his mother wanted her children to break free from their slave status in the future… but under the constraints and supervision of their master, this was difficult to achieve.
So she came up with an idea—
She sacrificed four of her five children to concentrate resources on nurturing the one with the best potential.
Due to the master’s constraints, the children’s food was reduced. Each child could only eat half their fill. In a state of continuous hunger, the Snake People’s instinct to transcend would gnaw at their flesh and blood, prioritizing the strengthening of their brains, digestive systems, and nervous systems, thereby maximizing the success rate of a ‘gamble before death’ with minimal cost.
And this mother, on the basis of each child eating only half their fill, forced them to regurgitate two-thirds of their food to preferentially nourish one of the better-looking female Snake People—Snake People society values beauty, and the gentle beauty of females often surpasses that of males, thus the cost of cultivating a qualified priestess was much lower than that of a male priest.
There’s another problem: female slaves’ primary roles are washing clothes, cooking, managing the household, and fulfilling their masters’ sexual needs. Male slaves are dispatched to mines, hunting, patrolling, protecting their masters during travel, or serving in dangerous roles like militias, making them more prone to disabilities or scars, which affects the level of their ‘beauty.’ For instance, Fiery Fist Hassan’s arm… that was lost in an accident due to excessive hunger and exhaustion.
His siblings also paid a price. His youngest sister, being too thin and ugly, was disdained by her master and directly sold off; later, her scales were found in a ritual shop. His eldest brother died during a hunt due to hunger. His second eldest sister, due to weakness, spilled scalding food on the young master, and was consequently beheaded and died from infection with one arm cut off. He was the sole survivor.
The decision made by that mother could be described as cruel, powerless, yet correct—it was indeed the only plan for their family to escape the shackles of slavery.”
“…I see.”
Upon hearing this, Eivass understood. It was like children from poor families not having money for school, so their siblings would work to provide tuition. Only in Anxi, such support was much crueler. If Eivass guessed correctly… this support came at the cost of lives. Regardless, working would not easily lead to such accidents. But in this damned desert, slaves were actually made to do strenuous or dangerous tasks, with no medical guarantee… and even in a state of not eating enough, barely maintaining vital signs.
Food that was already half-filled was then regurgitated two-thirds of it. It would be fortunate not to starve to death. But in Anxi, slaves dying was a commonplace occurrence—unless they did not send slaves out to work, but instead did some business themselves, opened an inn, or something similar. Otherwise, if they died outside while working, no one would suspect anything.
“Did they succeed?” Eivass asked.
“They succeeded, in a way,” Grandet replied. “They did raise her—a female Snake Person named Niya. By the age of fourteen, she possessed a considerable degree of beauty, meeting the standards of the Snake People Temple. With abundant nourishment, her height was more than three times that of her siblings, and she had skin as white and soft as jade, and scales that emitted a purple, illusory glow in the sunlight.
“But precisely because of this… her contract master became even more unwilling to let her go. After abusing her, he even attempted to scratch her face. However, a Snake Person who had undergone overeating already possessed a power equivalent to a second-level Extraordinary. She did not resist the abuse, but when he tried to ruin her appearance, she fought back, breaking the contract master’s bones.
“Although the Snake People Temple had already purchased the slave, as usual—the contract master did not receive compensation from the Lord. This contract master then went to the Lord to complain, claiming his slave had injured him and requesting punishment from the Lord. But his ability to articulate his words was too poor, and he bored the Lord. So the Lord punished both parties simultaneously.
“He hung the bothersome contract master to dry and ordered someone to torture the slave who dared to harm her master—to skin her. The Snake People Temple did not want to risk offending the Lord by protecting a new priestess who had not even begun to worship the Ring Heavenly Envoy. Thus, before reaching the Temple, she was captured and skinned.
“And after the contract master was hanged, his wife and son were about to become slaves due to the loss of income and ability to pay taxes. They went mad and cruelly killed Hassan’s mother before they degenerated into slaves. So, Hassan lost all his relatives.”
“…What about his father?” Eivass asked with a frown.
“That was the contract master himself,” Grandet sighed. “Yes… a father, on the verge of his somewhat illegitimate daughter gaining freedom and hope, reported her out of jealousy and greed, causing her to die with him.
“—Hassan found the whole affair too cruel, too absurd, too incomprehensible. These people, along with this fractured country, all seemed like a joke that couldn’t elicit a laugh.
At this point, Grandet bared his teeth. “So, he escaped and joined the rebel army. He vowed to burn all these people to ashes.”
That incredibly ugly, ferocious smile made Eivass feel as if, through him, he could see the appearance of the “Snake Person Hassan” whom he had never met.
