After I died, my personal maid rebelled.

The residents have shared some information with you: silver coins and tobacco bags will be reduced by one each.

Early in the morning, Oswald and a group of elderly women squatted by the roadside smoking, warmly greeting his intelligence staff.

Oswald, pipe in mouth, smacked his lips. "What else did he inquire about?"

The buck-toothed old lady raised her hand and began to recount her story with great emotion. To the untrained eye, it looked like she was recreating a conversation, or perhaps even performing a dramatic battle of wits.

The residents have shared another piece of information with you: silver coins will be reduced by one.

When Jenny finally found the Duke, she was immediately met with a barrage of sharp gazes from the street. The old ladies, devoid of their usual amiability, stared at her like prey caught in a spider's web, creating a strong sense of oppression for Jenny.

Don't say a word, we're on the same side...

Avoiding the old lady, Jenny carefully approached Oswald and said, "Your Grace, Mr. Paul has already left Ice City."

"yes."

Oswald rose and shook hands with each of his outstanding employees to say goodbye. He encouraged them to continue their efforts and to strive to expand the organization, especially by bringing in young, fresh talent, keeping pace with the times, and continuing this legacy.

Watching Oswald finish his work silently, Jenny followed him away, puzzled. "Your Grace," she said, "I don't understand why the Papacy would deliberately frame their paladin?"

Exhaling a puff of smoke, Oswald seemed completely unconcerned, smiling and greeting passersby while asking, "Sister, would you pick a withered flower?"

Withered flowers… Janet didn’t understand what the Duke was trying to say. “If it’s about tending the garden, I would do it this way.”

"Yes, doing it this way eliminates any psychological burden, and from an outsider's perspective, it's the obvious choice."

Oswaldmore, smoking his pipe, turned and smiled at her. "The key is, how to make the flowers wither."

"There's a flower in the garden right now, blooming incredibly brightly, but it's not the variety I want. Picking it directly would make me seem malicious, while leaving it unattended would take away nutrients from the other buds. So, do you know what I'd do?"

"I'll casually snap the flower's stem, making sure it doesn't collapse, and let the flower wither slowly, and then..."

Jenny couldn't listen anymore; only now did she truly understand Paul's silence.

His face showed no sadness, no shock, no anger, only a calm acceptance, as if to say, "So that's how it is."

"Don't look sad because they picked a withered flower, nun. We manage an entire garden."

Oswald stopped and took a drag of his cigarette, arms crossed.

Sadness...me? Jenny looked up and realized that they had arrived at the gates of the Duke's mansion.

Oswald sighed softly. So idealists really do attract each other? But he couldn't let Sister Janes get involved, especially since Lolo himself had made his choice.

With his back to the Duke's mansion, he pointed to the bustling street they had passed through and offered words of comfort to Jane.

"Those in power exploit the people and then kill those who rebel with a clear conscience; those who benefit from the system cut off the people's upward mobility, allowing them to indulge in depravity, and then say they deserved it; administrators keep the people ignorant, distort their understanding, and then make them hate and oppose each other..."

"But we cannot let them wither, nun. They need you. They can still bloom. Spring is when everything is in full bloom."

Oswald was almost in tears. He had been hoping that Jenny would be able to perform miraculous feats during the plague outbreak, but instead, this girl showed such concern and sorrow for a man she had only met twice.

Could it be that the theorem that childhood sweethearts are destined to meet has come into play?

Following the direction the Duke pointed, Jenny paused for a long time before finally nodding emphatically.

"I'm going back to work, Your Grace."

Um... actually, taking a break isn't a bad thing...

On another bustling street in the Ice City, Luna tearfully packed up all her goods and sold them to a traveling merchant.

The tableware market in Harbin was already saturated, and this time, she lost everything. The initial investment of three gold coins was reduced to only one and a half.

The lord's figure was lonely, and the guards felt bad about it, so they all went forward to comfort her.

Luna sighed, "I say, how about I give you names? It'll only cost one silver coin each time."

Miss... you could have just stolen it.

"Um, Miss, I already have a name." The scout raised his hand somewhat embarrassedly, scratching the back of his head and chuckling.

"You named yourself?" Luna looked him up and down. This kid didn't seem like an intellectual at all.

"No, it was the Duke who named me Timo. But whenever the Duke calls me, he likes to say: Timo-er~"

When he said that, Luna remembered that he was the guy who had saved her brother in a critical moment and was rumored to have been rewarded with twenty gold coins after the battle against the Undying Serpent!

Luna immediately flew into a rage. "Come on, throw this nouveau riche out of here!"

A group of people were playing around, and no matter how agile Timo was, he couldn't handle being surrounded and chased by several people. In the end, he was caught and quickly promised to treat them to a meal before they would stop.

"Actually, Miss, you can't make much money doing small businesses." Timo fawned over and offered his advice: "The Western Territory is still plagued by necromancers. I heard that a town has been destroyed. This is our chance, Miss."

"What opportunity?" Luna rubbed her face with her white radish arm, forcing out a greedy smile.

She had considered raiding the ruined cities of the Western Territory, but they were no match for necromancers, were they? Even the commander of the Western Territory's Knights, who had mobilized an elite army, couldn't do anything to the necromancers. If their eight hundred men went, they would probably be in the same boat.

"Young Miss, every time unrest breaks out, prices in the surrounding area rise rapidly, so the spare money that the affected civilians have usually can't last long."

Those personal experiences kept replaying in his mind, and Timo gradually sped up his speech.

"To make a living, most of them would choose to sell themselves to nobles. During this period, nobles and merchants would appear in the turbulent areas with large amounts of food and money, and the two sides would buy and sell people..."

"Like a vulture circling in the air, waiting for its prey to die?" Luna interrupted him, her face slightly annoyed.

She finally understood why her brother always rushed to quell the chaos whenever disaster struck the territory. It turned out that these guys had already prepared a complete industrial chain, just waiting to lure the disaster victims to hell!

They first conspired to secretly raise prices, then all they needed to do was prepare money and food. Once the disaster victims sold themselves into servitude to the nobles, they used the money to exchange for overpriced grain from merchants. In this process, the disaster victims would be completely exploited, becoming slaves in the hands of the nobles with no hope of escape…

"Young Miss, we brothers have all played the role of bandits in the Western Territory. This time, we'll make a quick in-and-out operation, robbing the money and grain from the nobles and merchants. We're sure to bring you enough profit."

Luna clapped her hands. "Alright, I'll go tell my brother. When the time comes, you all kill those nobles and merchants, leave the grain for the disaster victims, and be quick enough to take all their money back!"

……

The further southwest you go, the sparser the forest becomes.

The sun cast dappled shadows on my shoulders, making my skin scorching hot. The chirping of insects around me was unbearably hot, and then it was all crushed by the sound of horses' hooves.

Ahead lay a barren mountain forest, where the majesty of the Bone Dragon once descended, but the name of the dragon slayer has been gradually forgotten by the world.

Gazing at the desolate hills, devoid of birds and beasts, Paul stood for a long time, his vision of the world gradually blurring.

Legend has it that before the goddess left this world, the four races devoutly served her, and their relationship was relatively harmonious. After the goddess departed, in order to unite the four races, the Church, which promoted the concept of equality, was established.

However, this unity lasted for less than a few years before war broke out between the various races. The papacy was torn apart by the war, and was later rebuilt by a saint, which is why it continues to this day.

Equality between races became equality among human beings, and as the scope of this equality narrowed, the Papacy gradually became a synonym for the powerful and wealthy in people's minds.

The world may not need the Vatican, and people may not need churches that are adored with money...

Perhaps the Duke is right; they shouldn't define beauty or ugliness, good or evil, let alone equality.

When equality is framed, inequality will quickly encroach on the blurred boundaries, directly trapping equality within them.

I shouldn't be thinking about these things. If the goddess's doctrines were written by humans, has the Vatican also misinterpreted them? What, then, has everything I've learned in the first half of my life...?

Can I really accept all of this calmly?

Paul couldn't find the answer; he was even more afraid of getting it.

Continuing westward, crossing vast scorched earth, from day to night, Paul felt no fatigue. His heart was heavy, and the only solace he found was the physical care Miss Janice had given him.

As the night deepened, the wind grew gentle, dispelling the heat from the skin.

There was a rustling in the woods, and the moonlight shone intermittently, illuminating a group of ragged people huddled in the grass. Their faces were empty, devoid of energy, or rather, they had lost everything.

They looked at Paul blankly, and Paul looked at them silently.

He knew that even if he defeated the necromancer, he still wouldn't be able to offer them any help. Everything in the world has two sides; this was a day of suffering for the disaster victims, but also a day of harvest for the nobles.

Paul had nothing to give them. He dismounted, beheaded the horse with a single stroke, ignored the gushing blood and convulsing hooves, and continued on his way without uttering a word.

The ruined city appeared in the firelight. Ahead was a camp where carriages were gathered. Nobles and merchants were around the campfire, clinking their glasses merrily. Behind them, a string of famine victims they had bought were tied to the tree trunks.

Paul continued walking, as if on a pilgrimage, the city he was visiting was now only three kilometers away.

Outside the city was the army led by Siot. When he saw Paul approaching on foot, he was slightly taken aback at first, but then he noticed the bloodstains dripping from Paul's sword sheath and immediately ordered his army to make way for the paladin.

In the city, the sound of chains rattling echoed continuously.