Chapter 821: The Burning Sail

Chapter 821: The Burning Sails

Night gradually descended upon the southern seas, deepening into darkness, while far away in West Sailport, dusk had only just begun to settle. The scorching fiery red seemed as if it might boil the seawater dry.

Near the equator, there was no such thing as winter. Watching the venomous sun about to sink into the ocean, the laborers on the docks finally breathed a sigh of relief.

At last, the sun was setting!

After the bustle of the past few days, the docks had lain empty for several days—not a single ship in sight.

With no work for anyone, they finally understood what it meant to "rise and fall together."

If West Sailport truly went bankrupt, everyone would have to sell themselves back to the nobles' plantations.

Though the Brahmin Province had one saving grace—one could survive on dirt—no one could eat dirt forever.

Eating that stuff put on no flesh, and the more you ate, the weaker you grew. The weaker you grew, the less you could work. It was a vicious cycle that ended with the whole family buried in the earth.

Eating dirt for two or three days a week was safe; four days was still acceptable. But five or six days in a row became troublesome. Unless it was a famine, no one would eat that way.

Fortunately, shipping had recently recovered a bit, and people who had been idle for so long finally had work again.

Thinking of Lord Nagi’s promise to raise wages, everyone worked with all their might.

Their thoughts were simple, even somewhat "naive."

Since the boss paid them, they couldn’t let him lose out—they worked faster than those slaves who just dragged their feet.

But—

Not everyone reaped the benefits.

Take, for instance, the fellow who had carried Orissa’s corpse and stood up for his family a few days ago.

Or those who had clamored for wages to be raised to ten dinars a day.

Every single one of them, without exception, had been given the cold shoulder and landed on Lord Nagi’s little blacklist.

First, the labor registry—in principle, it only recommended jobs to obedient workers. As for those unruly troublemakers, it either avoided recommending them altogether or assigned them the lowest-paying tasks.

Returning to the docks was out of the question.

As for the steel mill or the cement factory—that was a pipe dream.

After all, any industry that turned a profit had shareholders who were all cut from the same cloth.

Either they were Vlandians, or they were nobles of the Empire.

Bound by shared interests, these people were fiercely united.

As for those freemen blacklisted, they either waited at home for notices or took up jobs like cleaning sewage or other sanitation work.

Their vacated positions were gradually filled by other slaves who had been promoted to freemen.

After all, the Brahmin Province had no shortage of slaves.

It was like a metabolic system, forming a perfect closed loop.

In this respect, West Sailport was much like the old Golden Port.

Such menial tasks were usually done by slaves, since there was no worry about them slacking off.

But for freemen, doing only this kind of work couldn’t support a family.

Some tried to enlist the help of those laborers who had gained benefits, hoping to unite them again for common interests—another nonviolent, non-cooperative strike. But the latter avoided them like a plague.

They had already gotten what they wanted.

Eight dinars a day was enough to live on; they hadn’t asked for much to begin with.

As for those left behind…

They had only themselves to blame for not being obedient.

Besides, those who hauled sewage, swept streets, or had no work at all couldn’t really be considered "their own kind."

A man earning only two dinars a day dared to call himself their brother?

Presumptuous!

At first, even they felt a bit embarrassed when they refused.

After all, deep down, they knew exactly how they had gotten their dinars.

But then word spread that the ringleaders of the trouble were all members of the Silver Moon Sect. When they had been beaten, many had received bandages at the Silver Moon Church.

Soon after, rumors circulated that Pastor Melchior sympathized with the Moonfolk.

The Moonfolk!

That was the Empire’s greatest headache!

All the clues seemed to "fall into place." The troublemakers were instigated by the Moon bandits, even taking money from Rasi. And so, the ostracism of these people became perfectly justified.

From a hero revered by thousands to a villain despised by all, Isher, with a bandage wrapped around his forehead, sat gloomily in the church.

This was the only place where he could find a moment of peace.

Nagi’s cudgel squad didn’t dare to provoke this place yet—perhaps they were waiting for an opportunity, or perhaps they were seeking instructions from their master. And those who spat at the emblem of the Silver Moon Sect, afraid of being mistaken for Moon bandits, dared not come near either.

Ten days ago, it was he who had carried Orissa’s corpse and confronted Nagi.

At the time, his blood had been hot, and he felt things couldn’t go on like this, so he had bravely stepped forward.

He had never even seen Rasi—how could he have? That demon was thousands of kilometers away, and besides, the invincible General Arayan was fighting him on the front lines.

Yet those people insisted that he had met Rasi one night and swore he had sat talking with the man for hours.

The scar on his forehead still throbbed, perhaps infected.

Melchior, in his robe, approached. He had an old nun remove the bandage, then applied alcohol to disinfect the wound before wrapping it anew.

The sharp pain tormented Isher’s consciousness.

But more unbearable than the physical pain was what he felt in his heart.

“…I don’t understand. Why don’t those people see it? What happened to me today will happen to them one day, or to their children. It’s obvious—this is Nagi’s way of dividing us. He’s using people we’ve never even seen to set us against each other.”

This classic plot had appeared in *The Awakener Bohr*: the inner-city nobles tried to bribe Bohr with a black card, and when he tore it up, they bared their fangs, trying to smear the hero, fabricating scandals about him and a prostitute, inciting the people of Boulder City to hate him…

But the people of Boulder City saw through the inner city’s tricks. Instead of trampling Bohr underfoot, they rallied around him, becoming the sparks that dispelled the long night.

That was the climax of the novel.

He still remembered the night he read that part—he had been so excited he couldn’t sleep all night.

“You’re too impatient,” Melchior said as he treated the wound, sighing. “What seems obvious to you is still new to the people here.”

Isher frowned, trying to argue.

“But Bohr…”

Melchior cut him off hastily.

“That’s just a novel—a submission by a cannery worker named Spberg to the *Survivor’s Daily* supplement. It’s not real history… How can you expect real people to be exactly like characters in a book?”

“But Boulder City isn’t just from that novel,” Isher said in a low voice. “I heard Bohr had a real-life prototype.”

Melchior fell silent.

Perhaps it was himself who was impatient.

His original intention in running the *Silver Gospel News* was merely to teach the people here to read and write, and those who learned to write would naturally go on to pen their own stories.

Just like Spberg, who once could not recognize a single character, he eventually wrote that earth-shattering article.

And before that, Hal, the founder of the *Survivor Daily*, aside from writing news, had only serialized some insipid doggerel in the paper.

But now, looking back...

It seemed he had done a terrible thing.

He had no doubt that he was walking the path guided by the Silver Moon Goddess, yet he had been too hasty.

"I have been there before, and you people... are actually different from them."

Isher lifted his head, looking at him with confusion, and asked.

"Different?"

Melchior nodded.

"Yes. They know that Pol is fake, but most believe he can be real, and from the bottom of their hearts they hope he is real, so every one of them becomes Pol. As for 'Ken,' he is a rarity among them."

"You are actually smarter than them, but you have misdirected your intelligence. You also know clearly that Pol is fake, yet you blame a fictional character for not being real—how is that different from trying to scoop the moon out of the water? Because you cannot fish the moon out of the water, you conclude the moon is false."

"I believe he exists! I have never thought he was fake!" Isher interrupted him, rising excitedly from his chair. "Not only that—I am willing to become him!"

"You are brave, but it is utterly meaningless... Everyone standing with you does not believe. Your surroundings are destined to be dark, and in that darkness, opportunists are destined to fill every corner. If you continue like this, you will either become a fleeting spark, burning out before dawn arrives, or you will blaze fiercely for a time... But either way, your end will not be good, and the people here will not change a thing."

Unable to bear seeing him like this, Melchior continued in a gentler tone.

"I do not want you to be too disheartened. You are a good man, but I can only tell you that the time is not yet right. Westhaven Port has been established for less than a year, and you all... only became freemen in the last two months, while most people here are still slaves."

"And in Boulder City, slaves were never the mainstream of their society; they only appeared on some farms beyond the Great Wall. Countless shelters opened their doors, bringing them the technology and ideas of the Age of Prosperity, yet even so, they languished for a hundred years... and just before they saw the dawn of victory, they indirectly gave rise to monsters like the Torch."

He also hated the Legion—or rather, no one liked those big-nosed fellows.

Especially for the people of the Sunset Province, they were like demons, committing every evil deed.

But after spending some days in Westhaven Port, his thoughts had shifted slightly.

No issue can be discussed apart from its historical context. Locking people in a cage is certainly bad, but driving them from a narrow cage into a slightly roomier one can still be considered progress.

Even if that slightly roomier cage is still worthy of criticism, the act of progress itself deserves praise.

Isher lowered his head and remained silent.

He was grateful for the priest's unpaid help; a poor wretch like him could never obtain such a precious thing as alcohol.

But clearly, Mr. Melchior could not fully understand their suffering.

On the plantation estates, they had not lived more miserably than in Westhaven Port.

Back then, they were all the master's private property, but the master, if only for the sake of his purse, would not bother to drag out a piece of furniture every day and smash it.

Moreover, no matter how wicked the master was, there was only one of him. Most people never saw what that master looked like in their entire lives, let alone knew how extravagantly he lived, so they could coexist without trouble.

But in Westhaven Port, it was a completely different story. Those masters had joined hands with the Vlandians, eager to crack open their very bones and suck out the marrow.